Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert
| Episode no. = 8 | Season no. = 5 | Guest(s) = Brad Hunt as Kris Kedder Tamara Feldman as Kendra Frank Benita Marti as Annie John Kyle Hansen as Jared Stottlemeyer Terry Fradet as Stork Craig Figueiredo as Security Guard Novillero as Themselves | Writer(s) = Andy Breckman | Director = Daniel Dratch and Michael Nankin | Airdate = August 25, 2006 | Prev = Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink | Next = Mr. Monk Meets His Dad |}} "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert" is the eighth episode of the fifth season of Monk, and the 69th episode overall. It guest stars the members of Novillero as themselves. Plot summary Monk and Natalie accompany Stottlemeyer to the biggest rock concert of the year to search for his runaway son. While they are searching the grounds, Monk and Natalie discover the body of a dead roadie in one of the port-a-potties. The police believe that the victim died of an apparent drug overdose, but Monk finds a number of clues that appear to suggest foul play. As Monk and Natalie investigate the murder with assistance from a friend of the victim, they soon have to scramble to find the evidence that puts the real killer away before it is destroyed forever. Plot Late at night, maintenance crews are setting up for the San Francisco Band Jam, the biggest music festival of the year. As the stage is set, pyrotechnics are tested, and tents go up, one roadie, Greg "Stork" Murray, makes his way over the grounds to the trailer of pop singer Kris Kedder. Stork bangs a few times on the door, and then turns to see Kedder approaching him. Stork promptly produces the Trafalgar band's latest CD, which he admits to having received from a disk jockey friend of his who received an advanced copy. Kedder claims that the cover was his idea, and Stork quickly asks him if stealing the copyright to his song "Peggy's Gone to Memphis" was also his idea as well. He accuses Kedder of treating him as another roadie that can be ripped off as if nobody is going to care. Kedder tries to bribe Stork, but Stork warns Kedder that he can't get away with copyright theft - he's written copies of the sheet music for his song and sent them to himself by registered mail. Stork takes out a cell phone and prepares to call a copyright lawyer, and Kedder panics. He quickly grabs a beer bottle, kills the luckless roadie, then takes a shot from his mint-flavored asthma inhaler. The next morning, Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger show up at the police station, looking for Captain Stottlemeyer. Natalie shows him a $34 drycleaning bill for the shirt and jacket Monk ruined during his previous case. Stottlemeyer gives Natalie the brush-off, but she insists that as the bill is a work-related expense, she and Monk are entitled to compensation. He tells them that while he thinks they deserve every dime they can get, he can't do anything about it, as Lieutenant Disher is the disbursement coordinator. Unfortunately, Randy hasn't showed up at work today, as he called in sick, with a bad fever and a cough. Stottlemeyer refers Natalie to the assistant disbursement coordinator, and when Natalie asks who that person would be, he merely says they don't have one. Just then, Stottlemeyer gets a call from his ex-wife. When he hangs up, he mentions to Monk and Natalie that it seems that his son Jared has skipped school and might be at a rock show that is in town. He prepares to head up to the grounds to go look for Jared. Natalie offers to help Stottlemeyer out, and Monk does - unwittingly, having misinterpreted the phrase "rock show". When they arrive in the parking lot, Monk realizes he misinterpreted the phrase as meaning "geology exhibit", while Stottlemeyer complains about how he'll miss an entire day of work trying to locate Jared. Monk immediately wants to head back to civilization, but with them having come in the captain's car, Stottlemeyer suggests that Monk just wait by the car. Natalie and Stottlemeyer enter the grounds, and provide a very old photo of Jared to the security guard at the main entrance. A security guard provides them backstage passes to allow them to search where necessary. They make their way through the crowd, and split up to search the grounds, after Stottlemeyer imagines that he is having a conversation with Natalie, even asking her if she thinks he's avoiding his kids on purpose because he feels guilty about the divorce and the fact that he's dating Linda Fusco. Back by the car, Monk attempts to control the rowdy tailgate parties that have sprung up around him with no success. It seems that he's only talking to himself. When a couple starts making love on the hood of the Captain's car, Monk decides to go call a taxi to head home. He speaks to the head security guard, who directs him towards the payphones. As Monk makes his way through the crowd, unsure if he's going the right way, he gets hit by a blue beach-ball. He throws it away, and continues through the crowd, only to get hit by the blue beachball a second time. This time, however, he lashes out at the person who threw the ball, and caught up in his anger, Monk unwittingly walks into the port-a-potty a few feet to the left of the payphones. A few minutes go by (in real time), and a rather relaxed Monk comes out. Natalie spots him and runs over to him. Monk mentions that he was calling for a taxi, and she quickly says that he wasn't in a phone booth, and starts to lead him away. Monk is immediately horrified at where he has just gone. Just as Monk and Natalie are passing by the fifth port-a-potty, a maintenance worker jimmies the lock on the door and Stork's body falls out. Sometime later, Monk and Natalie are conversing. Natalie tries to reassure Monk that he was probably only in the port-a-potty for a few minutes, but Monk likens the inside of the port-a-potty to a medieval torture device. Natalie sympathizes with him, mentioning that she once read about how the Spanish Inquisition locked people in outhouses as a form of torture. Monk gets hit by the same stray beach-ball from before, and seems ready to leave. Natalie reminds him that they haven't found Jared yet. But as she is saying this, they are approached by Kendra Frank, a roadie for the band Trafalgar, a close friend and colleague of Stork, and his biggest sponsor at Narcotics Anonymous. She mentions that the police have ruled Stork's death an accident - they believe that he had overdosed. However, Kendra is skeptical: for one thing, he had been off drugs for 17 months and couldn't have started again. Natalie reminds Kendra that she and Monk were present when the body was discovered, and they saw a needle in his right arm, but Kendra insists that that is not possible: Stork apparently suffered from trypanophobia (the extreme fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles). She mentions that he was the only roadie she ever met who didn’t have one tattoo, and he missed a whole South American tour just the year before because he wouldn’t get a vaccine shot. Trying to be helpful, Natalie suggests that Stork got over it, but Kendra insists that it’s unheard of for a person to get over a phobia overnight, and she hands them Stork’s tour jacket. Monk thumbs through the victim's pockets and finds some random knick-knacks, including a backstage pass and a map of the grounds. He notices a clue: there is an X marked on the acupuncture tent. He tells Kendra that Stork apparently had an acupuncture appointment that morning at 7:30 AM. In the meanwhile, Stottlemeyer's search for Jared doesn't turn up the boy at all. However, he does find Randy. He makes a call from a few feet away on his cell phone to surprise Randy, and pretends to be ashamed to have woken Randy up. He then sneaks up on him. With Kendra in tow, Monk and Natalie go to the acupuncture tent to talk to Annie, who is running the tent while also tending to another patient. During the interview, Monk tries to straighten the needles on one patient, only to cause the patient to have a pained reaction. Annie tells them that Stork was her first customer that day. He had dropped a custom-made earring that Kendra recognizes as being one she made for him. Stork apparently didn’t say much apart from a story about how he met Eric Clapton. He also talked about how he was giving up and wanted to get high and had gotten over his fear of needles, and lastly asked where he could find some heroin. He paid her and left, but not before helping a young woman who was having trouble blowing up her blue beach-ball. Monk figures that the beach ball in question is the one that keeps hitting him. It now seems like the overdose story is true, and Monk, Natalie and Kendra leave, disappointed. As they leave, Monk compulsively touches a 400 watt heat lamp and burns the tips of both of his pointer fingers (even as Natalie tries to restrain him). Monk and Natalie go to the first-aid tent, where a volunteer from the Red Cross prescribes Natalie an ointment for treating Monk's burns. While they are there, Monk and Natalie also take another look at the body, and Monk immediately notices a few additional clues that poke holes in the overdose story: for one thing, how did Stork walk across the muddy area in front of the port-a-potties without getting any mud on his boots? Monk notices a lack of other track marks, and takes interest in the rubber strap found on Stork's arm. The first aid volunteer confirms that he does work with a lot of drug addicts, as they come and go in this particular territory. Monk decides to perform an experiment, and puts the strap around Natalie's right arm. She proceeds to make a knot in the strap, while the volunteer confirms that to tighten the strap, an addict would then pull on one end of it with their teeth. Natalie refuses to do this, but this gives Monk another crucial clue - this happens to be the only way a person could tie off their own arm. Given that there are no teeth marks on the strap found on the body, it can only mean one thing: Stork's arm was tied off by someone who killed him and made his death look like an overdose. Elsewhere, Stottlemeyer and Disher find Jared in the crowd. As they are leaving the grounds, Stottlemeyer informs Jared that he's been grounded for the next two weeks. Monk, Natalie, and Kendra catch up to them, and Monk informs Stottlemeyer of his suspicions that Stork was murdered. The investigation is soon underway. Due to his problems with crowds, Monk surveys the crime scene from the nearby hillside and talks to Stottlemeyer over a walkie-talkie. Down by the crowd control barriers that have been erected around the port-a-john, Natalie reassures Kendra that Monk doesn't always view crime scenes the way he is doing it currently. Stottlemeyer talks to a maintenance worker who confirms that he didn't put up the 'Out of Order' sign on the port-a-potty, and who confirms that they had to jimmy the lock to get inside. Monk theorizes that the lock must have been rigged. Stottlemeyer finds that there are some fresh scratches on the lock (given the lack of rust). Inside the port-a-potty, he locates a piece of a guitar string. When he hands the string to Jared, Jared identifies the string as being the high D string from a 12 string guitar, a very rare type of guitar. Monk theorizes that Stork was probably killed somewhere else, then the killer (Kedder) put the body inside, tied the string around the deadbolt on the lock, and ran the wire through a vent on the right hand side of the port-a-john to lock the door from the outside. Back at the first aid tent, Stottlemeyer and Disher talk to the medical examiner, who confirms that Stork was bludgeoned to death, though she mentions that she'll get a better look at what happened once they run an autopsy on him. Stottlemeyer, meanwhile, reconciles with Jared, thanking him for identifying the guitar string. Jared, however, is not entirely reconciled with his father, especially after finding a "Runaway Child" poster with the old photo of him on it. Backstage, Kris Kedder is playing an excerpt of "Peggy's Gone to Memphis" (the song that Stork wrote and which he stole the copyright to) for some young women when Monk, Natalie, and Kendra arrive to question him about the murder. While questioning him, Monk catches Kedder in several lies, noticing that Kedder has mud on his boots but there is none on anyone else's shoes. He also has observed that Kedder is out of tune. He starts to believe that Kedder is "the guy" - the guitar string used to rig the port-a-potty's lock came from a 12 string guitar, and Kedder is the only person on the grounds to own such a guitar. Monk, Natalie and Kendra next proceed to investigate Stork's trailer. Kedder tags along, supposedly because he is "curious". What Monk does not know is that Kedder has come along because he wants to retrieve and destroy an incriminating envelope that will prove that Stork wrote "Peggy's Gone to Memphis". As they enter the trailer, Kedder takes another shot from his asthma inhaler. Natalie comments that it smells mint-flavored, and Kedder mentions that his inhaler is a Danish import. Kendra, meanwhile, tells Monk that Stork actually loved camping out in the trailer in between gigs. Monk finds a rhyming dictionary, and Kendra confirms that Stork's biggest dream was song writing. Kedder sees the incriminating envelope, but realizes that he'll have to wait until Monk is distracted before removing it. Luck is on his side here: just then, Natalie spots a photo of a little girl. Kendra tells them that the girl is Margaret, Stork's daughter, who currently lives in Memphis, Tennessee with her mother. As Monk, Natalie and Kendra are looking at the photo, Kedder removes the envelope with the incriminating sheet music copies, tucks the envelope under his shirt, then rushes off. As soon as Kedder is gone, Monk immediately senses that something is missing, but both Natalie and Kendra deny having taken anything. Monk tells them that he's sure he saw a white envelope up on the wall, and he points to where he claims he thought he saw it. Natalie finds a blue receipt for registered mail, and she notes that Stork apparently sent something to himself. Kendra suddenly remembers that four months ago, she accompanied Stork to the post office. He was mailing copies of his sheet music to himself, which he claimed was part of his "insurance policy". She doesn't know what the song was, but Monk figures it out - the song that Kedder was singing just now, "Peggy's Gone to Memphis," was in fact Stork's song. He's deduced that Stork wrote the song about his daughter - after all, "Peggy" is a nickname for "Margaret" and Stork's daughter lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Monk realizes that Kedder stole the envelope and is probably going to get rid of it, and the envelope is all they need to arrest him for murder. Monk, Natalie and Kendra race out of the trailer and make their way through the crowd, trying to get to the stage as Kedder performs the stolen song on stage. However, they are too late - in front of their own eyes, Kedder burns the incriminating envelope on one of the flamethrowers. They look on, confused and dissappointed. Here's What Happened As Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher rendezvous, Monk explains what happened (a process made harder by the fact that Novillero is up and playing their song "The Laissez-Faire System"): Stork wrote "Peggy's Gone to Memphis," which Kris Kedder stole from him. Stork confronted Kedder that night, and Kedder killed him in a panic. Then he put Stork's body into the port-a-john, and attempted to make it look like Stork had overdosed. However, midway through staging the crime scene, he realized that he had made a colossal blunder - Stork had been off drugs for 17 months and he had a pathological fear of needles, meaning he would never be seen getting an injection. Kedder realized that no one was going to believe that Stork had overdosed, unless he made it look like the victim was back on drugs and had gotten over his fear of needles. To do this, he disguised himself that morning and paid a visit to the acupuncturist. He even made sure to tell Annie that he was looking for heroin. Afterwards, he returned to the port-a-potty, and put the map into Stork's pocket to lead the police to the acupuncture tent. Then he rigged the lock on the port-a-john: he tied a string from his guitar around the dead bolt, ran the wire through the vent, and then closed the door, pulling on the wire from outside the vent to lock the door from the outside. Stottlemeyer mentions to Monk that the guitar string is not enough physical evidence to arrest Kedder. But then Monk sees a blue beachball flying through the air, and he suddenly remembers something Annie had told him when he, Natalie, and Kendra questioned her: after Kedder had seen her that morning, and while still diguised as Stork, he helped a young woman blow up a beachball. Disher points out that there will be millions of fingerprints on the beach ball, but Monk reveals that the proof is inside the beachball - he points out that Kedder has asthma and uses a distinct inhaler. Natalie points out that the inhaler is mint-flavored and is very unique (she remembers Kedder saying that it was imported from Denmark). Monk points out that when the guitar string, the fact that Annie can confirm to seeing Kedder blowing up the ball while impersonating the victim, and the fact that the air inside the ball should be possible to trace, are all added up, they have enough evidence for the district attorney to make a case against Kedder. Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher immediately take off, chasing the ball through the crowd, but every time one of them gets close to the ball, the person holding the ball immediately throws it to someone else, extending the chase. While they do that, Monk attempts to make an announcement from the stage, only to get booed off by the crowd. He fails to notice Kedder grab a screwdriver from a spare toolbelt, having just been told that Monk is onto him. Eventually, the ball lands at the top of the scaffolding for one of the loudspeakers, and Jared climbs up a ladder to grab the ball. Just then, Kedder climbs onto a ladder a few feet away from Jared. He intends to use the screwdriver to deflate the ball and destroy the last piece of evidence that could tie him to Stork's murder. Jared is torn between either throwing the ball to Kedder and letting a killer get away, or standing up to his father. Kedder smugly asks Jared if he doesn't trust cops, but Jared, after a tense moment, says that he trusts his father, and throws the ball to Leland, while Randy subsequently handcuffs Kedder. As a handcuffed Kedder is led to a patrol car, Stottlemeyer instructs a uniformed cop to make sure the beachball doesn't accidentally deflate before it gets to the crime lab. Randy has gotten his hands on a Kris Kedder t-shirt, which Natalie comments will be worth a fortune after Kedder goes on trial and gets convicted. As Monk and Natalie walk back to the car, Stottlemeyer stops with Jared at a photo booth to get a few photos of him for the next time he takes off. Additional information *Novillero stars as themselves. They are the third band seen on the stage, and whose performance is interrupted when Monk attempts to make the announcement about the beachball from the stage. *The song that plays as Monk, Natalie and Stottlemeyer arrive at the Band Jam and are walking through the parking lot is a song that previously was used in "Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic". *Terry Fradet had previously appeared on Monk as an inmate in the prison library in "Mr. Monk Goes to Jail". James Logan, who plays a roadie, previously appeared in "Mr. Monk Goes to the Office." *This is one of several episodes that show how murders happen wherever Monk goes with unusual frequency. In sharp contrast to "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", in this scenario, based on her body language and what she says, Natalie is obviously willing to participate in the homicide investigation over searching for a runaway child. However, this might have been because the murder happened before they arrived. Goofs *Based on the fact that Stork calls a copyright lawyer late at night before he is killed, San Francisco's yellow pages must contain a 24 hour copyright lawyer of some sort. *There are some continuity errors with the songs that are played on stage during the episode. The one that is being performed when Monk, Natalie and Stottlemeyer are walking through the parking lot is being performed again when we see the medical examiner looking at the body. A song that plays when Monk is in the parking lot amongst the tailgate parties is later heard again in the scene where Monk and Natalie first meet roadie Kendra Frank, despite the fact that one other song has been performed. It seems very unlikely that any rock concert would do the same song twice in one event. *Not only would Kris Kedder be possible to indict based on the air inside the ball, but they would also have his DNA on the cap that prevents air from leaking out. *The medical examiner could have determined that Stork had died late at night, which would call Annie's story about Stork seeing her that morning into question and make the police suspect that she was in fact seeing his killer. Also, Kedder's voice is slightly higher pitched than Stork's. Wouldn't Annie have been suspicious if she noted that "Stork's" voice sounded a lot like Kedder? *After Kedder bludgeons Stork with the beer bottle, he takes a shot from his asthma inhaler. It should be noted that moments earlier, we saw two people walk by them. Even though this area probably doesn't receive a lot of foot traffic, Kedder is taking a lot of risk by taking a shot from his inhaler before doing anything about the body. *When Natalie finds Monk after he steps out of the port-a-potty, her purse is over her shoulder, but as she grabs him by the arm and leads him away, suddenly it's on her elbow, and a split second later, just as Monk and Natalie see Stork's body fall out of the port-a-potty, it's back on her shoulder. *It's odd that after discovering the body, Monk and Natalie leave the scene. In a real-life situation like this, Natalie would call 911 and then she and Monk would wait by the body and attempt CPR until help could arrive. She would also want to call Stottlemeyer to inform him about what had happened. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes between the scene where the body falls out and the scene where Monk and Natalie meet Kendra - after all, Natalie is still wearing her sunglasses and hasn't taken them off. *When Monk, Natalie, and Kendra are questioning Kedder backstage about Stork's death, Monk never asks Kedder to supply an alibi, despite the fact that it is a standard police procedure to ask for an alibi. He should have asked Kedder, "Where were you this morning at 7:30?" since that would have allowed them to suspect that he was the patient the acupuncture lady treated that morning. Also, Monk doesn't ask some other general questions - like if Kedder knew Stork, if there was anyone who may have had a motive, and Kedder's relationship with the victim. *Kendra introduces Monk and Natalie by their full names when they talk to Kedder, yet there's no scene showing her learning this, though when she first finds them after the body is found, it is mentioned that she was referred to them by some of the cops at the scene. Production Sources 5.08